Our Impact

Prize-Based Savings: Product Innovation to Make Saving Fun

What if winning prizes while saving money could transform saving into something exciting? Linking the fun of winning cash and prizes with the virtues of saving money, prize-based savings is a new concept in the United States, but is an ancient and common practice around the globe. Ironically, another prize-based activity with few virtues, gambling, is already a billion dollar industry in America with a large customer base playing state-run lotteries and visiting destination gambling sites. In contrast to gambling, prize-based savings accounts provide the opportunity for significant upside winnings without any principal loss on deposits; an account-holder is simply "betting" their monthly interest in order to have the chance to win higher value prizes. With this in mind, in October 2006 Indiana-based Centra Credit Union launched "Super Savings," the first ever prize-based product in the United States. Working with Harvard Business School researchers and funding support from the Filene's Research Institute and Affinity Plus Credit Union, D2D assisted Centra in the pilot testing of Super Savings.

Get this Publication

First Name *

Last Name *

Email *

Oranization type

Subscribe me to CommonWealth News Please help us reduce spam by entering the characters pictured below.